To the future

I'm pretty low today - it might be that the end of this year has not really turned out how I planned and I'm finding myself at a bit of a loss. I missed The Photographer very badly this morning, cried for a while. I'm still feeling run-down and a bit lonely - another milestone gone without him there, a sharpening realisation that he really, really isn't coming back. Another chance to wonder what I did wrong, what was wrong with me. And when it will be fixed. Because it really isn't yet.

I'm trying to shake it off by thinking about this as the beginning of the year. Fresh and smooth as unblemished skin. A very usual time for reflection on things that have gone, things yet to come. A time for lists, in other words. I usually fashion my lists from activities, but recently I've lost connection with the idea that has much importance. Also, out of most of the things I had never done, I've pretty much done all of them. The better plan, is to revisit all the things I've enjoyed, and work out why. Which isn't to say I'm not going to try anything new this year (that would be terrible) but I'm certainly going to take my time and really investigate what it is I want. And how I want it.

I've realised that I have a strong separation in myself between the desire for a close, intimate, loving relationship and the desire for a powerful, connected BDSM relationship. The former is something I am not ready for, the latter is something that I would very much like. They share features, but are distinctly different. They are both "relationships" in the sense of two people having a relationship to each other, and have other similarities. Certainly there should be passion and intensity, I suppose that's something I can't really do without - either do something or don't, but don't do it half-heartedly or carelessly. Both involve knowing the other person and caring about their well-being. Both involve a validation of some kind, that both partners acknowledge the importance of the other to some aspect of their lives. They might even look similar, to an outsider: meeting for drinks, holding hands, kissing. But that's where the two diverge. It's about expectations.

There's a tendency to divide relationships into casual and serious, which tends to cause a lot of problems with definitions. I'm pretty serious about my kink, all of my kink is serious. Even when it is deeply silly. There's something awful, to me, about the word "casual". Casual implies ambivalence, a lack of really giving a toss. I can't stand casual. Even less so with the awful term "fuck-buddy". I realise that it is curious for someone who enjoys objectification to dislike these terms, but for me they lack a basic human essence to them, they are cold and merely go through the motions, never touching the sides. I don't want that, that's too removed from anything even vaguely sexual to be sexy. Like blank faced strippers, writing shopping lists in their heads. No connection between the image of desire and myself.

I know what I want, I have it in my mind. Someone, on the other end of a phone or email, who knew enough about me to not have to be concerned with preliminaries, we like each other and like each other's bodies. We know our sexual desires and are turned on by what the other wants. We are grown-ups about expressing our needs, friendly enough to hang around for coffee and curling up on the sofa afterwards. We take time for each other when we can, because we want to, and have no expectations of anything else, beyond the next time one or the other picks up the phone because they were horny or just wanted a bit of kinky companionship away from everything else. That would be a fine thing indeed.